Thank you petunia and entagor, for trying to show the human side of this situation.

I’ve heard a lot of conservatives puffing about their superior sense of personal responsibility. The attitude is one of, “I haven’t been hurt by this because I’ve done all of the right things, so the people who have been hurt must have brought it on themselves.”, and they proceed to pat each other on the back for their foresight, wisdom, and hard work.

Yes, hard work and personal responsibility are the keys to success, but that doesn’t mean that everyone who falls on hard times is a slacker, or stupid, or undeserving. Some people being hit by this are people just like you, who did all of the right, responsible things, and are suffering anyway.

My brother-in-law and I worked for the same company. When I became disabled a few years ago, that company denied my disability claim and fired me. Most of my family assumed that that denial meant that I wasn’t really disabled. Why would they give more credence to some insurance claims adjuster than they give to me (and my doctor)? Because they don’t want to face their own vulnerability. They know I had done the right things, worked hard, saved for my retirement, got a good job with full benefits, and they know that they aren’t any more protected from catastrophe than I was, but they continue to believe that they are somehow “safer” or more prepared, because the alternative is too frightening.

I’m sure that many of you are just fine in all of this, but you’re making assumptions about the people who aren’t that only serve to stroke your own egos. Here, in Michigan, particularly in the Detroit area, the housing market escalated wildly for years. Homes were vastly overvalued, and there wasn’t much choice but to buy the best you could afford and hope that the burn wouldn’t be too nasty. If you have kids, you can’t buy in a school district that endangers their lives, or a cheap enough neighborhood that endangers your own. You still need to be able to get to work, and people have roots and family that they can’t just leave behind.

My home is worth maybe half of what we paid, and my husband has had to take a job that requires him to travel for months at a time. I’m disabled and have had to rely on him for things that I’ll now have to take care of by myself.

Do I blame the banks? Not completely, but yes, a lot of the blame lies with them. They’ve been throwing themselves a party for years here, pumping air into the housing market and approving loans that were farther and farther from the reality of the actual worth of the properties, driving the costs up for everyone, not just the flippers and speculators. The people who bought in order to sell made out like bandits, while the people who bought to stay are sitting on upside down mortgages. We can’t make any money in Michigan, and we can’t leave because we owe our souls to the company store.

Another day older and deeper in debt. Yeah, we’re a bunch of irresponsible slackers. If one more thing goes wrong, and we’re unable to pay our mortgage, I guess it will be our own fault and we’ll deserve what we get. It can’t happen to any of you financial geniuses, though, because you’ll never get sick and be screwed by your insurance provider, you’ll never get bankrupted in a divorce, and you’ll never find yourselves unable to make a living where you are and unable to leave, because you’re all real conservatives.

We were a few days at most away from the economy tanking like we have never seen in generations being fixed due to the Gov’t spreading 2 years of real estate inventory out over 4-5 years, and all you can think about is who wins and loses politically. this will be a positive issue for us politically.

On Black Wednesday (September 16, 1992), Soros became immediately famous when he sold short more than $10 billion worth of pounds, profiting from the Bank of England’s reluctance to either raise its interest rates to levels comparable to those of other European Exchange Rate Mechanism countries or to float its currency.

Finally, the Bank of England was forced to withdraw the currency out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism and to devalue the pound sterling, and Soros earned an estimated US$ 1.1 billion in the process. He was dubbed “the man who broke the Bank of England.”

The Times of Monday, October 26, 1992, quoted Soros as saying: “Our total position by Black Wednesday had to be worth almost $10 billion. We planned to sell more than that. In fact, when Norman Lamont said just before the devaluation that he would borrow nearly $15 billion to defend sterling, we were amused because that was about how much we wanted to sell.”

According to Steven Drobny,[12] Stanley Druckenmiller, who traded under Soros, originally saw the weakness in the pound. “Soros’ contribution was pushing him to take a gigantic position,” in accord with Druckenmiller’s own research and instincts.

In 1997, during the Asian financial crisis, then Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad accused Soros of using the wealth under his control to punish ASEAN for welcoming Myanmar as a member. Later, he called Soros a moron.[13] Thai nationals have called Soros “an economic war criminal[14]” who “sucks the blood from the people”.[15]

(Paul Krugman and Jesse Jackson Jr. remind us that McCain has, up until about 72 hours ago, been in favor of ripping out all the safeguards put into America’s financial systems by FDR.)…

J_Gocht on September 20, 2008 at 2:48 PM

First you quote a Howard Stern site as your “expert”, now you quote Jesse Jackson Jr., you know the one that was given his distribution company because his father blackmailed them into it.
Howard Stern fans and Jessie Jackson…yeah, as if people really listen to you…Howard Stern blogs and Jackson, hahahaahaha!! Don’t forget to quote Winnie the Poo and Streisand next…

Paul Krugman and Jesse Jackson Jr are partisan. McCain just recently (2005?) called for reforms of Fannie and Freddie. Calls that went unheeded by Oslime-a. He probably couldn’t hear what John said because of all the contributions jingling in his pockets.

The same mindset of Congress that also quietly removed most Sky Marshalls, before 9/11, so that terrorists on domestic flights (since the few remaining armed flight security agents were only on international jetliners) would not have to worry about “regulation”.

Regulation is required when risk/money starts flowing.

Or the stupendously-tempted, temporarily-clever middlemen scoop up tons before it’s noticed by the “regulation-freed” depositors/investors/taxpayers.

Jackie Mason put it succinctly:
“Would you want them to deregulate the scale at your deli?”